Like or Dislike by Leon Lu

I wanted to explore the irreverent nature of people through an inanimate object which people could still connect with. I wanted it to be strange and grungy looking but something you might still consider cute. The idea was to get people to connect with it and try and get it’s attention. As people, we are easily distracted and change our minds without reason. That’s what I wanted to explore through my project. I called him ‘Gunther’.

The Build

Simply used servo motors which controlled his motion and used a ultrasonic distance sensor as an actuator. The challenge was creating smooth balanced motion which simulated life.

I also used wool, various forms of material, blue foam, Neopixel RGB LEDs and wood to construct the body and the structure.

(Note: I used the random variable function to create a sense of mystery to the actions of gunther, it would either come out and meet you or be afraid and run in based on a number it generated)

Challenges/Advancements

I had initially planned to use a web camera to detect faces through processing so the robot would not only react to one person but react to multiple people, say if more than one face was detected it would hide because it would be scared of multiple people approaching it at the same time. I faced trouble in communication between processing and arduino and decided to go with something simpler in the end. If given the opportunity to redo this project I would attempt making computer vision work in a more seamless way thus adding more character to Gunther.